


Don't Break Character

by yet_intrepid



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Pre-The Phantom Menace, Slavery, Tatooine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-21
Updated: 2015-03-21
Packaged: 2018-03-18 22:47:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3586854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yet_intrepid/pseuds/yet_intrepid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The most unbearable thing about slavery is this: in the end, Shmi can bear it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Break Character

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vinrebelle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vinrebelle/gifts).



> Title from "Be Still" from The Killers.

The most unbearable thing about slavery is this: in the end, she can bear it.

There are days, of course, that she can’t. The first day Watto hits her son, and Anakin tells her proudly that he didn’t cry, _not at all, Mom_ , she kisses the bruise and wipes his too-late tears, and she wonders if an explosive transmitter can be dug out. She wonders what triggers them. She wonders if it matters.

The next day Watto gives her a jar of driss pod paste, and Anakin runs laughing into her arms when she shows him. She wonders: if she died in tampering with the transmitter, and he came home to the aftermath, whether he would ever laugh again.

Shmi tries to tell herself that he is strong, that he does not need her. It is a lie.

So she bears it. She teaches her son to find refuge in well-weighed defiance, actions to irk but never enrage. She fosters his dreams of the stars, _the other planets, Mom, the ones you used to live on_.

She tells him the good things. He already knows: all that she leaves out was bad.

There is little food, and then enough. Anakin crashes in a pod race, gets kept late at the shop. Shmi worries. She gets them through the day, tucks Ani into bed as the suns set. She hoards up the hours of safety like flour in famine.

It is not enough, never enough. But she can bear it.

And so can Anakin, for now at least, though he chafes to be away. She tells herself he will go, one day, and walk the skies. Pushes away the reason which tells her he is bound forever sandside. Watches him dreaming, fixed-eyed and worldly-wise and yet not a little naïve, and lets herself hope.

The most terrible thing about hope is this: it leads her to bear the unbearable.


End file.
